Lee Rourke - The Canal

“JC reckons he could have you, girl.”

“He want you, girl, so much.”

“He could have you like that, girl.”

“Yeah, I want you, girl, I want you.”

She seemed to brush off their crude advances like one would a fly from one’s food in mid-conversation: nonchalantly and without a care in the world, second nature. It was the one with the red hair who started to touch her leg. She shivered. But she didn’t once try to move away. I looked across. I looked at his grimy hand on her leg, above the knee. He was squeezing it. His three friends giggling like the children they actually were — she just sat there. I had to say something, even if that something would pique their attention enough to turn violent with me. I had to say something.

“Take your fucking hand off her leg!”

It came out like that. I said it loudly. I almost shouted it. The four teenagers looked at me.

“What did you just say, man?”

“What did you say, man?”

“What’s that, man?”

“You talking our way, man?”

They began to surround me. She turned to me; I looked at her. She shook her head, instructing me not to say any more, but I couldn’t help myself.

“Don’t fucking touch her again …”

My right leg was shaking. The first one to hit me was the tallest one, the one with the shaved head: the blow came full in the side of my head. It hurt. The force of it pushing me from the bench and onto the ground. Then they began kicking me and I could feel nothing, except each thud as their feet dug into my ribs and bounced off my head. It felt as if the air had been sucked out of my lungs. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t hear anything. Then the shock of blackness.

Then nothing.

When I awoke they had gone. So had she. I crawled back to the bench. I looked over to the whitewashed office block: everyone was staring over at me: groups gathered at each looming window. Why hadn’t they tried to do something? Why hadn’t they shouted over, or called the police? My face began to throb. My ribs felt like they had been plucked from me. I found it difficult to breathe but I guessed that I was okay. My pockets were empty and my wallet had been taken. I knew I didn’t want to get the police involved; I knew I didn’t want to get anyone involved. But I wanted to know where she had gone to. It baffled me. I started to walk. Back towards Hackney. I needed to get to a phone box to inform my bank to cancel my cash card. I needed to walk towards where I thought she might be. I figured she might live in the De Beauvoir Town area, or somewhere in that location. It suited her. She looked that type: one of those individuals content to sit in a gastro-pub playing scrabble or backgammon with the one they love.

Just as I was about to leave the canal towpath I noticed the swan on the murky water. It was looking directly at me. Right at me. Into me. Like it knew something I didn’t. I stopped walking. It came up to me. It knew I had no food for it, but still it came, right up to the edge of the towpath. I knelt down slowly, painfully, and stretched out my hand to stroke its head, thinking to myself that it would shy away off in the opposite direction from me, but it didn’t; the swan allowed me to stroke its head and long neck, like it was a domesticated cat or something. This huge swan before me, allowing me to stroke it. It was the most incredible thing. Never had I seen such a thing before, and I certainly hadn’t had such a thing happen to me before. The huge, white swan and me. Friends.

The swan came to me. It came to me.

“Why do you always tell me these …”

“ Secrets ?”

“Yes, these secrets?”

“Because it’s easy.”

“Why don’t you tell me anything else?”

“As I said, there’s nothing else to say.”

“But …”

“But what?”

“But there’s lots to say.”

“It’s all been said before. Plus, the silences are just as important.”

“ Silences ?”

“Those times we don’t say anything … It’s when we say the most.”

“I don’t understand …”

“You don’t have to …”

“But I want you to tell me things.”

“ Things ?”

“Things about you …”

“I have done …”

“Not enough.”

“Never enough.”

The sun was shining. The bruises on my face were beginning to fade. Thankfully, I hadn’t seen the gang of teenagers in the few days that had passed since they had attacked me. Before walking back to the bench I had spent most of my time in bed, watching downloads on my laptop, and thinking of her, and when my bones eventually stopped aching, and my flesh had begun to heal, I plucked up the courage to walk back to her. I hadn’t mentioned the attack to anyone. There was no need to talk it through with her — our meetings weren’t about me. At least that’s how it seemed. Sitting on the bench had been a pleasant experience; the previous days in bed had been bliss, albeit a little painful.

It was on this day, and for the first time, that I noticed she had not one, as I had earlier thought, but two small, inoffensive moles on her right cheek. One seemed slightly bigger than the other. I didn’t think that she had been hiding these from me; I supposed I simply hadn’t noticed them together. I was noticing new things about her all the time. For instance: her mouth twitched when she was thinking or daydreaming, before she was about to say something — or say nothing. She would sometimes break off mid-sentence, abruptly stop for no apparent reason, but such were her words and intentions that not once did this cause me any confusion. She always seemed to have new cuts and bruises on her elbows and knees, little abrasions, bruises and marks. Little things about her began to pour into me — little by little I was beginning to see who she really was. At least that’s how it felt. And the less she said the more I understood. That’s how it was. And her lessness made it all the more terrifying.

Her skin was beautiful, a most wonderful colour, like freshly sanded-down wood. It revealed itself almost mockingly. I was embarrassed that I hadn’t noticed these things about her before; it infuriated me somewhat. She had told me things I had never heard anyone speak of. At first, I thought she must have been lying for some reason, that she must have been taking me for a fool. But she wasn’t. She was telling the truth, and there was no point in me trying to fathom how I knew that it was, and that was all I needed to know. This had all happened to me the previous couple of days, I think. Just after my bed-rest, when I was still sore with aches and sharp, stabbing pains, when I looked at her differently. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to forget what she told me.

“In order for us to continue meeting like this there are two fundamental things you should know about me.”

This is what she said to me, how it all started, how I remember it, on the bench, the commuters passing us by.

It was around midday.

“What do you mean?”

“I’ve always liked cars.”

“Okay.”

“Ever since I was a young girl I always wanted to own one. My peers all had dreams of fairy-tale weddings, money, big houses, clothes, and boyfriends, husbands and children. I just wanted a car. On my seventeenth birthday I took my first lesson. I was a natural … It was easy. I passed the test my first time without breaking a sweat. At first, I used to use my father’s Volvo up until I bought my own. My first car … I saved up all year … A bashed-up old VW Beetle. It was an original, not one of the new things. It was blue. It never got me anywhere. Always breaking down on me …”